Wednesday, June 14, 2023. Today we started the leg of the trip that Amber and I have been most anticipating: the journey across the country by train. This leg will take us from Toronto to Jasper over the course of three full days. I did my best to research ahead of time what this part of the trip would be like and even played some YouTube videos for the girls to give them a better idea of what to expect. But nothing is ever quite the same as seeing things in person.

Before we got to the train, though, we had a morning of silly maneuvering in front of us. You see, we had to get from our condo rental to the train station. It sounds so simple until you start putting all the pieces together. Since we flew into Pearson International Airport, we of course rented our car from there as well. And I setup the rental car to be returned to the airport without even thinking about it (I don’t actually know if there were any other options anyway). However, the airport is not close to our condo nor the train station. They are both mostly downtown, but not really close enough to walk with all of our luggage.

So with all this in mind, I previously planned out the early morning to go something like this: 1) leave our condo and “check out” by returning the key to it’s hiding spot outside of Tim Horton’s, 2) drive to the airport, 2) return the rental car, 3) find the UP Express terminal, 4) ride the UP Express train from the airport to Union Station downtown, 5) check in for the train, and finally 6) board the train for our 9:55 departure. After I initially wrote it all out and backtracked to figure out when we should leave, I came back to double and triple check this plan to be absolutely certain I had allowed ample padding for Toronto traffic or any other unforeseen circumstances.

Luckily we got out of the condo right on time, and I’m happy to report that everything went pretty well according to plan. I thought we were going to end up being a bit early, but it turned out to be just about perfect given the steps we had to go through to check-in for the train. We did end up adding 1a) grab breakfast from Tim Horton’s to eat on the way to the airport, and our lone mistake was 5a) realize we told the staff at the train station handling checked bags the wrong destination (Vancouver instead of Jasper – yes, we want those bags during the stopover!) so our bags needed to be retagged. They had already disappeared into a baggage area, but the attendant assured me she’d get the tags switched. Hopefully that one won’t come back around to bite us in a few days…

The remaining check-in steps involved heading to the business lounge to meet the service manager for the first two days on the train, then meeting the meal coordinator for our dining car to choose whether we wanted the first or second sitting (first please!). Then we were shuffled down a ramp to stand in line for an escalator to take us back up to the platform where we could finally board the train!